Going deep down in a hole

After three days of motels, museums and driving through flat farmers country and people with pretty funny accents, another kind of challenge awaited us. We left the small city Flagstaff in Arizona to visit one of the natural wonders of the world, and one of America's greatest sights; The Grand Canyon. The road was desolate, but eventually became crowded with other tourists. There were patches of clouds in the sky,  with the occasional  shower  here and  there, but the temperature was still between 35 and 40 degrees warm. We hadn't done any homework prior to arriving, the place was simply big, that much we understood. So we used  the guides at the visitor's center, that showed us an ambitious trail from the south rim of the grand canyon down to something called "Skeleton Point". After that, the guide said something about water that we didn't pay any attention to. We got on the bus that the guide had pointed out and reached the most amazing view I have ever seen in my life!
So the Grand Canyon is a desert area where various circumstances caused the Colorado river to carve a 446km long, 0.4-29km wide and up to 1,8km deep gorge in the ground. Geologists love this place since it contains material for them to study earth's  history going back even billions of years. But most of all, it's one of the most amazing and beautiful natural formations in the world.

The main reason why the view is so spectacular is that you have two rims somewhat in the same level across from each other, at the point we were, the other rim was about 10km away from us, which makes for a very magnificent impression. Inbetween the two rims you have a gorge that you can't see the bottom of (you can see the bottom from the rim at other places, just not where our hike would start).

Generally a varied landscape, sometimes just simply steep, but mostly deadly vertical drops where the environment consisted of red desert sand, white cliffs, shrubbery and sometimes actual tree-looking vegetation. Further away you'd find strange blue cliffs that seemed to be from another world. Add  to that the constant sense  of vertigo, two steps from where you were walking was a ravine that you couldn't see the bottom of, something that made even those without vertigo to gasp and step back from the ledge, more than once even.

No photos can make this place justice, but we did our best. Eventually however, we became tired of snapping off photos all the time and seriously started our downwards hike toward Skeleton Point, a so called "moderate" trail descending a couple of km down the ravine. It consisted of 1m wide dwindling roads with hairpin turns; sometimes hillpaths with a gentle slope, sometimes so steep that steps needed to be cut out from the mountainface. It  was relatively easy to walk down, a sentiment shared by everyone, and when the sun showed itself, our tshirts flew off.
We had reached halfway when we came upon an area with restrooms and some shade. We met a guide there that looked somewhat like John Locke from the tv-show Lost, who strongly recommended us not to hike any further down, it had become too hot and we didn't have enough water with is. My travelbuddies thought that that was nonsense and went on. I've always liked John Locke, felt a bit less of an elite athlete than the others, was nursing a cold, enjoyed the sights and so I stayed put.

There under my tree I entertained myself by basking in the sun and studied the blue squirrels (might also have seen some flying squirrels). Encountered another instance of american kindness when I met a family from California that were also driving coast to coast, an even more impressive feat than what we're doing, since they were doing it with 4 kids on the trip.

My supermen travel companions of course made it back fairly quickly, an hour and a half before John Locke's expectations even. Somewhat deterred by a previously injured knee and dehydration, but otherwise in good spirits. After the reunion, the rest of the ascent started and I quickly realized that it was not a small thing. If anything, I'd like to say that if Grand Canyon is among the most beautiful places I've ever seen, that climb was one of the outrageously worst experiences I have ever had! We had about 40degree heat, no shade, limited water, walking at a couple thousand meters altitude and climbing quickly into thinner air. In hindsight I think it was the latter that got to me the hardest, it was as if someone tied a rope around my windpipe as soon as I used a bit of effort in my walk. However, after stumbling up very slowly and hallucinating about falling down the ravine, the sun hid behind a couple of clouds and I realized that I could manage it if I took a lot of breaks, so I reached the rim a while after the other guys. That was probably the day we fought the least during the trip back and not even Dan had enough effort in him to hit the gym when we returned to our hotel. Definitely a day I won't forget easily!

What made it extra memorable after all that was how it ended, with a very close elk-sighting. An elk sauntered up to the bus that were to take us back to the visitor center. He let us snap a couple of photos of him before the bus started rolling.


Tired but impressed with our own feats we went to bed (Jacob glad over having pulled off the troublesome hike but worried about the state of his knee) with one singular thought in our minds...after  a well deserved night's sleep, we're driving to Las Vegas !